Piercing attention to our incessant inattention is the only meditative redemption.

Aayush Tiwari –

If you have ever tried to sit in meditation you must have observed what a fierce restlessness is in this enigmatic phenomenon called mind. In a blink it’s on the moon and the next millisecond it is shopping in Mauritius. Like the debris getting smeared from the volcano the unwelcomed thoughts keep exploding like a nuclear chain reaction. Perhaps this restlessness brought about by the drastic information onslaught over a few decades is making this ‘Generation Z’ drown like Titanic in drugs, social media, porn and cheap entertainment of all sorts .

However if observed profoundly the only constant in life is our restlessness right from the demand for toys in childhood to the solitude post retirement. The objects triggering this restless mind keep on changing in the flux of time but that homogeneous sting of unease is intact and unfazed. Meditation is the only solution to these jitters but unfortunately all forms of meditation that are prevailing today are like a whisky bottle that does provide some relief but are eventually a sham.

Basically this anxious quest is our existential search for something permanent in this ever changing evanescent universe. We are bound to cling to objects with a fixed expiry date be it the life of our loved ones or be it the beauty of our aging skin. We are helpless in this matter as our sense organs are outwardly directed and since we never turn inside we have to cling with objects or people meant to perish one day. Pleasure and pain we drive from outside can never be eternal as our mind is designed in such a manner that it makes everything mechanical and lifeless with time.

So then what is the solution ? True wisdom that still exists in its purest form but is still in codes and highly reserved from the hum drum we need to understand .

So the million dollar question is what then is the real meditation and how to evade the mouse trap of this gigantic spiritual market dominated by fake gurus and shallow motivational speakers. Well as mentioned before our search is for the eternal , the immortal and as we discussed the only thing in our knowledge that is never changing is our turbulence . If we understand this totally and completely that only the objects triggering anxiety change but the fundamental mechanism of anxiety is always the same. If we see this we turn our focus from the objects causing restlessness observing only the restlessness. Only the inattention. Our brain will make this constant inattention mechanical like everything else and kill it. Mere attention to inattention devoid of the sources that are causing it liberates us from this disease forever. Like once the demand for a toy or a doll dominated our childhood but with maturity faded away without us even knowing exactly when the toys and dolls lost their significance. This realisation happened with maturity that is timeless hence we can’t remember the day , the date when our toys had no meaning for. Isn’t it a joke that those toys and dresses were once a do or die situation and without us knowing the day , date or the time their significance just vanished. Since life is short we can’t wait that much that all that keeps us engaged start looking like toys. So the need is to pay a hawk like attention to our inner self to annihilate the reason we are always worried and tap the timeless that is meditative and turns all our anger, envy, rage and obsessions into a joke.

Be this noted that the attention we talk about here is not the attention taught in schools but the attention that takes over us when we suddenly see a cobra at an arms distance or when a lizard falls on our pillow. This attention is not a function of time but the infinite life energy acting through consciousness before the time bound mind can interrupt.

We must have noticed how difficult it is to focus our attention on a candle flame or a divine statue as these gurus preach so why not remove the object and focus on the inattention only, while meditating. Let me be more clear. It’s always far more easy to concentrate on something steady rather than something moving at a very fast speed. As we know thoughts move zig zag faster than anything we know then meditation should be on something that doesn’t have such a high velocity. As we have discussed above our restlessness is so constant throughout life that it’s steady wavelength can be meditated upon. We need to just watch the nature of this restlessness for example as we are being haunted by a ‘psychological’ fear of losing the job. Then we must try to save our job but in the moments of meditation turning completely indifferent to the job but only the fear of losing it. What we will notice is first the wave of fear changes the expression, let’s not disturb it there. Then it changes the breathing pattern, let’s not interfere here also. At the deepest layer then it will change the heart beats, let’s not allow the mind to interfere here as well. Through the layers of psychology as this wave penetrates reflecting on the heart beats, breathing, stomach palpitations undisturbed by the mind automatically it comes to a zone where all of a sudden it vanishes. This is the zone of spirituality where the mind doesn’t operate. This is the zone of the soul where we come to the realisation that all our restlessness is an illusional, product of deep conditioning. At this moment we laugh , and we laugh like a Buddha, as we laugh remembering the times we fought blood on blood for toys. All conflicts then seem like a joke and we attain childhood but with wisdom, maturity and clarity.

Once more let me explain from a different angle. The fear wave vanishes because 99 percent of our fears are psychological and a complete mental illusion. The remaining one percent of fear is a gift of nature as it is the defense mechanism important to save us from perils. Just like a deer is frightened of a lion and hence is naturally alert towards being feasted upon. That one percent is a natural meditation, all the rest is cent percent a psychological inertia. With this understanding we transcend the mind and start dwelling in the soul. This soul is what all wise men say, fearless, pure, serene and divine.

So to conclude this attention to this inattention grown in consciousness like a cactus is easy to be observed and uprooted with only and only observation. This observation can’t be learnt but cultivated by piercing attention to our inattention for redemption. Many wise men including Osho have been advocating that an indifferent witnessing of thoughts without being judgemental is meditation. But the reports from NIMHANS disclose that thousands of meditators lose their mental balance by doing the wrong kind of meditation and yoga. This report is very much relatable as in meditation and yoga we are dealing with life energies and if they go against the flow they are bound to blow us off. After all anyone who is watching the thought can go crazy as they are so random, so tiring, so fast that watching them continuously will invite madness. Observe the constant restlessness of the thinker not the thoughts.

This is most beautifully enveloped by the most significant statement ever made on earth by J. Krishnamurthy “The observer is the observed” and this is what the codes in Brahm sutras point out.
I know this very well that the crux of advait vedanta that I am trying to reflect with immense sense of belonging with my readers will not be that user friendly today. Its abstract nature has kept it out of reach of the mediocre minses and hence kept majority confined to all sorts of karmkands and superstitions. Maybe a few decades down the line when some AI Robot will take over as the Prime Minister of the country people would understand in the present time of crisis information is not the game changer but consciousness. Humans have dominated the planet based on intelligence but now as intelligence has been developed by machines we have to shift to the highest dimension , that is consciousness. AI equipped chess engine Leela Zero with a rating of 3800 plus against the previous world champion Magnus 2700 plus Carlsen is a thought provoking example that AI will soon enslave us and destroy us the way we have destroyed the planet. So here I request if you are one in thousands who understands and have managed to read it till the end please support the cause with your motivational feedback – aayushtiwari@lawyer.com